Creating a Drop-Down Menu with BrowZine URL's in HTML

Modified on Fri, 30 Sep 2022 at 10:07 AM

BrowZine Web is designed around durable URL concepts so that as a user, without any special abilities or "make durable link buttons" you can always just grab the URL out of the menu bar and create durable links to that "view" of BrowZine. This allows librarians, faculty, physicians and students to easily create shortcuts by bookmarking any page they are and getting DYNAMIC content. For example, you might bookmark the CURRENT issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association like this:

http://browzine.com/libraries/14/journals/18440/issues/current

Easy! This uses the Open Access Demonstration Library, but this works in any library you have access to!

You could also create a direct link to, say, the Library Science content in the Open Access Library like this:

http://browzine.com/libraries/14/subjects/67/bookcases/165

However, maybe you have a good reason to want to create a bunch of links to various subject areas or journals but don't want to use a bunch of screen space to do it. A quick and easy HTML drop-down menu that utilizes these links is just the ticket! You can use this HTML template here:

<form>
<select name="menu">
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX">-- Please Select a Subject Area --</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/subjects/57">Arts and Humanities</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/subjects/60">Biological Sciences</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/subjects/62">Biomedical and Health Sciences</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/subjects/66">Business and Economics</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/subjects/61">Earth and Environmental Sciences</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/subjects/63">Engineering and Technology</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/subjects/58">History</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/subjects/68">Law and Legal Studies</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/subjects/59">Philosophy and Religion</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/subjects/65">Physical Sciences</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/subjects/67">Sociobehavioral Sciences</option>
</select>
<input type="button" onClick="location=this.form.menu.options[this.form.menu.selectedIndex].value;" value="Browse Journals">
</form>

So what all can be changed here and customized for your library? Lots of stuff!

First though, you should absolutely change the "XXXXX" to reflect your BrowZine Library ID or this won't work at all! For example, if your library ID is "1041" you could update the links like this:

<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/1041/subjects/57">Arts and Humanities</option>

As you can see, there is a separate line for EACH item in the drop down menu.

Want to feature only the "Science Subjects"? No problem! Just remove the lines you don't want so it looks something like this:

<form>
<select name="menu">
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX">-- Please Select a Subject Area --</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/subjects/60">Biological Sciences</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/subjects/62">Biomedical and Health Sciences</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/subjects/61">Earth and Environmental Sciences</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/subjects/63">Engineering and Technology</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/subjects/65">Physical Sciences</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/subjects/67">Sociobehavioral Sciences</option>
</select>
<input type="button" onClick="location=this.form.menu.options[this.form.menu.selectedIndex].value;" value="Browse Journals">
</form>

You can see also between the example and the code where you would update the NAME of each shelf area and the corresponding durable link. So while this template has the "Level 1" subjects for BrowZine, it could be used for ANY level you would like!

Finally, you can also easily change the name of the button to click from "Browse Journals" to "Go!" or "Browse" or "Start BrowZine!" etc.

Direct Links to Favorite Titles

This code looks pretty much the same, but for a potentially different purpose! You can use direct links to journals to provide a quick access point with very little screen real estate right from the home page of your library website. The sample code for this (again with XXXXX for the Library ID) is:

<form>
<select name="menu">
<option value="">-- Select a Popular Medical Journal --</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/journals/57/issues/current">BMC Medicine</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/journals/3679/issues/current">PLoS Medicine</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/journals/47/issues/current">Molecular Brain</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/journals/18123/issues/current">BMJ Open</option>
<option value="http://browzine.com/libraries/XXXXX/journals/35554/issues/current">Journal of Medical Internet Research</option>
</select>
<input type="button" onclick="location=this.form.menu.options[this.form.menu.selectedIndex].value;" value="Read Current Issue!"></form>

You can then easily replace the direct links to the current issues of the journals and the journal names with any journals you would like in BrowZine!

Additional Options

The templates presented here are based off the templates shown at this site and you may enjoy tinkering with additional options you find with the "form builder" widget provided.